


Just Meat

by MothTale



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Cannibalism, Clint Barton Has Issues, Clint Barton Needs a Hug, Dead Dove: Do Not Eat, Deaf Clint Barton, Gen, Gore, Horror, Hurt No Comfort, Implied/Referenced Rape/Non-con
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-12
Updated: 2019-08-12
Packaged: 2020-08-20 01:49:09
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,253
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20219788
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MothTale/pseuds/MothTale
Summary: Clint Barton has a decision to make.An awful, stomach-turning decision.





	Just Meat

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Ranni](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ranni/gifts).

> This is kinda an alternate scene for my story [A Human Touch](https://archiveofourown.org/works/16199333/chapters/37858862).  
It's not really necessary to read it to enjoy this story. All you need to know is: Clint was kidnapped. He killed the guys. Unfortunately he also killed the only guy who knew the codes to get out of the building. He is now stuck.
> 
> The cannibalism is pretty damn graphic. The research I had to do for this...*shudders*
> 
> This is inspired by a comment Ranni made on A Human Touch. I hope it's not too horrible.

Clint eyed up a bottle of whiskey sitting behind the bar.

Something told him he was gonna need it.

He’d been thinking things over for an hour already - and really there was no point in thinking about it because he already knew what he was gonna do. He was gonna do whatever it took to get back home, to his family, even if he wasn’t exactly sure how he was going to face them when he did.

Clint grabbed the whiskey bottle, unscrewed the cap and swallowed down a few mouthfuls. The burn was only a momentary distraction.

The more time he wasted, the more time there was for things to break down, to decay and go bad.

But, a desperate part of his brain argued, each second of that was time for his team to find him - to bust down that irritatingly sturdy, code-locked door and get him out so he could get to work burying this whole horrible fucking episode deep down in his subconscious.

It wasn’t as if Clint could hear them coming after all - he hadn’t been able to find where the sick son of a bitch, now one dead son of a bitch, hid his hearing aids when he wasn’t raping him. The Avengers could be right on top of him and he wouldn’t even know it.

He wasn’t going to bet his life on it though.

He took another swig of whiskey and resisted the urge to have another scout around, in case some other source of food had miraculously appeared since the last time he’d checked.

_Let’s just get this over with._

\--

It wasn’t the first time Clint had dismembered a body.

Of course, back then he’d had the proper tools - and the main purpose had been getting the corpse into manageable chunks for easy disposal rather than...harvesting.

He’d put a towel over the poor bastard’s face, so he wouldn’t have to look at him. He had toyed with the idea of cutting up Roth first. He supposed there’d be a certain poetic irony to it, considering what he’d promised to do if Roth put any body part of his near Clint’s mouth, but the thought of swallowing, of _digesting_ the guy almost made him throw up.

So he’d opted for one of the bodyguards instead.

\--

Despite his skills with a bow, Clint wasn’t much of a hunter.

Something about killing innocent animals just didn’t sit right with him. Definitely not for fun.

For food though, that was another matter.

It had been a few of the carnies who’d taught him how to butcher a deer, how to skin and gut.

It wasn’t easy, no matter how many times Clint tried to repeat in his head _‘meat, meat, it’s just meat.’_

_Just meat with opposable thumbs and a face you can’t even bear to look at right now…_

The guy wasn’t innocent.

He’d known what his boss was doing.

But somehow it was hard to hold onto that, as Clint cut a circle around the man’s asshole, freeing up the end of the intestines ready for Clint to yank them all out.

He couldn’t afford to mess this up.

He’d checked over the rest of the bodies, and both the other two bodyguards had abdominal wounds which meant most of the meat would be ruined already.

Sure, there were the arms and legs which might even still be okay once he was done here, but there wasn’t as much meat on them, and without a saw of some kind separating them from the torso was gonna be tough.

He didn’t want to starve to death because he was too chickenshit to do what he needed to do. Even if that included hauling a man’s insides out with his bare hands.

Working around the ribcage was a pain, there was less space to manoeuvre than with a deer, but he managed it.

With the viscera dumped in a corner of the bathroom Clint got to work on washing the carcass out.

Once he had it skinned and broken down it would be easier. Once it no longer looked like a person.

\--

He put the head in the corner, still wrapped up in the towel. The hands and feet followed.

\--

‘I’m sorry.’

Clint couldn’t help saying it. Just like he couldn’t help the pang of sympathetic pain when he had to grasp the guy’s dick and balls and slice them off.

He threw the whole lot into the corner without looking.

\--

The skinning was messy.

Clint’s main tool was a knife which had probably only ever been used for cutting lemons and limes.

It was a damn sight better than the shard of glass Clint had used during the fight, but it wasn’t nearly sharp enough to do the job properly.

Well, it wasn’t as if Clint was planning to make a suit out of the damn thing, so it probably didn’t much matter.

\--

Getting the limbs off and the carcass into manageable cuts was even worse.

Starting with the arms, he cut away as much of the muscles,tendons and blood vessels as he could, exposing the glaring white, almost blue-tinted, head of the humerus.

He pulled until the arm came off.

It didn’t really look a whole lot like an arm anymore, which was kinda a blessing, because Clint wasn’t sure how much longer he could hold out without puking.

It would defeat the purpose if, after all this trouble, he couldn’t keep any of the damn stuff down.

The femur gave him a bit more trouble, but he was nothing if not stubborn.

He was just glad he couldn’t hear any of this shit.

\--

At the end of it all he had several bowls full of raggedly cut meat. Unidentifiable, anonymous red meat.

He just hoped it would be worth it.

\--

Preserving it all wasn’t a problem.

Clint had salt, in abundance.

He also had a small supply of ice and a fairly compact freezer.

And there was still all the booze. If he wanted to, he could probably manage an improvised whiskey glaze.

At least it wouldn’t be bland.

\--

It still took him several days before he was hungry enough to open up the freezer.

After that, there was no point putting it off.

\--

By his estimates he had a few months worth of food, if he was careful.

And that was easy.

It tasted fine, especially with the salt and the lemon juice, but Clint was never really able to forget what it was.

He ate only when he had to.

\--

A week in, and the bottles behind the bar were mostly untouched.

Clint had tried getting drunk, just for something to do, but as he moved past tipsy he’d started to cry and hadn’t been able to stop.

At least he didn’t have to hear the sounds he made.

\--

He wished he could go back downstairs, but the thumb he’d used to access the elevator had started to decay and Clint didn’t want to risk getting stuck.

He wanted to watch as the bastard who had put him here wasted and rotted.

\--

On the second week Clint started to think maybe he was gonna die anyway.

He'd gone and turned cannibal for nothing.

\--

Of course when the Avengers finally came, when Steve busted down that fucking door, Clint was in the middle of eating.

Sure, it wasn’t necessarily incriminating. It wasn’t like he was sat there taking big ol’ bites out of a clearly, _recognisably_, human leg.

It was just meat.


End file.
